2018_ABSENCES+PRESENCES_ETSAM_Unit Maroto, UndergradP3
The project consists in the intervention in one of the gardens of The Spanish Academy in Rome, a core of reference of the art and the Spanish creation. A space of gastronomic offer and culinary arts where to celebrate big events and meetings had to be designed, events not necessarily linked to the Academy activity.
Because of the location it was especially important to take into consideration the preexistences. In this case, it was decided to keep the boundaries intact except for a staircase and the new access that will be explained later. Likewise, the ruined wall located in the center of the space was given a leading role as the main element of space separation.
The project is conceived as a process in which you access, walk through, cross a ruin and enter an almost magic place where the restaurant is discovered surrounded with vegetation and framed by The Academy.
The entrance is treated like a slit in the wall. It is located in the top corner of the plot. This way, an almost tangential access is forced introducing you into the space of back, so that when you turn you discover the complex.
The first space is generated as a large outdoor lobby. Here the guests are supposed to start greeting each other while being offered a cocktail and going down smoothly into the ruin that hides the next area.
Then, the last space is a leafy garden where the main piece is located. The geometry of the restaurant was born from the study of the Academy plant, where we find the well-known Tempieto of Bramante. The ring form provides great spatial richness and relationships. Afterwards, in order to conserve the power of the piece and taking advantage of the fact that the ground is elevated half height from the zero level of the rest of the courtyard of the Academy, it was decided to move kitchen, bathrooms and other facilities to the lower level. This way, a transposition of the ring is done. This level works as a distribution corridor around which all the services are arranged radially and unobtrusively.
The last challenge of the project was the inclusion of a small studio for a kitchen intern. This is done according to the strategy used in the rest of the project, but at the same time integrating it with the other scholars living in the building in front. This way, a minimum housing is created in the form of a capsule looking at the building of his partners in the Academy, but forming part of the radial distribution explained before.
